Essays, Thoughts and Opinions on Politics, Philosophy, Religion and Culture.
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
Why Politics "sucks" in 2008.
Politics sucks in 2008. Its seemingly irrelevant, obscure, ridiculous, boring and cynical. Has it ever been any different? Maybe but that’s not the point the point is what’s going on in the here and now. I’m used to hearing that before Thatcher when you looked at Labour or the Conservatives you knew what you were getting. That’s barely discernable now. The squeaky Liberal Democrats as perhaps the only true party of opposition in Britain. But who the hell’s their leader? Is it still Ming Campbell? Honestly? In America if I vote Republican at least I know what I am getting, guns, Jesus and babies. As for the democrats what do they stand for? What does Obama mean when he goes on about hope?
How relevant are politicians? Its an empirical question. How many laws do they pass. How powerful are they as opposed to Big business, the media and Religion? Who runs Britain is it the CBI as Monbiot thinks? Is it the Murdoch press? What has Gordon Brown really done? How important are Quangos and advisors and civil servants?
Is there such a thing now as rational political discourse? Or is it all mood music, shallow trite speeches and saccharine smile photo-ops and empty gone the next day headline grabbing sound bites? It really needs to be said that politics, British Politics anyway is boring. If your not actually involved in it ie an MP, civil servant, journalist I cannot see how you could sit through a hour of the house of Parliament without snorting speed. Take Gordon Brown a clever fellow no doubt and who can surely hold his own in a argument but when he appears on TV its “Bla Bla Bla” He is liable to induce narcolepsy in a child with ADHD. If Brown gets kicked out which seems likely he could always get a job selling sleeping pills on late Saturday night TV for people on a ecstasy comedown (perhaps it would not be sound marketing as he is already a sleeping pill) I’ve got it!-- simply put a speech of him on a loop on some backwater TV Station where Insomniacs can tune in and quickly doze off out only to wake up the next day on the floor with the TV still on.
Silliness aside as well as questions as to what he has actually done. He is an unelected Prime Minster. He has governed for well over a year now and the British Public have not been given a chance to decide whether they want him or not. I should also add that when they have been allowed to vote, Labour has done disastrously.
In America the situation is different as with everything its that much bigger, glitzier and gaudier. It needs to be said John McCain is to old to be President, he is well past retirement and according to Social Security Administration website there is a 10% chance that McCain will die in his first term. Needlessly to say this increases after the second term and is compounded by the stress of the Presidency (decisions, travelling etc). Now of course if he is President and does die or has a stroke then guess who does become president--you guessed it Sarah Palin the Iris Robinson of American Politics.
Sarah Palin is by her own admission a born again Christian. She has embraced Creationism which is no better than saying the earth is flat. Denied global warming and holds every kind of illiberal, intolerant view you can think off. She believes that its God’s will that America is in Iraq, asks Alaskans to pray for a oil pipeline and publicly stated that she would not support an abortion for her daughter even if she was raped. The Church she was raised in has some scary end of the world views. I would not be surprised to find her believing in the rapture or the end of days erupting out of a nuclear holocaust. Lest I be accused of picking on her because of Religion, she is simply not competent for the role of VP. Two years as Governor and before that Mayor of a small town who population is only 9,780 (2007). As way of comparison the town that I live- Comber, Northern Ireland has 8,933. I should add though that the figure for Comber was taken in 2001 and is likely to have increased since then. By way of interest we don’t have a full time police station and we don’t have a mayor. She has no foreign policy experience and has already made gaffs “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." Its not Tax payer funded. Her son is going to fight in Iraq I wonder if she could locate it on a map.
If irrationality and incompetence was not enough then try corruption. Palin is currently under investigation for abuse of power along with her expenses under scrutiny for misuse. So this is the woman who could one day have her hands on the Nuclear codes. Her appointment is nothing more than a cynical move by McCain to shore up support with the Christian right and possibly Hillary Clinton supports. It is an insult to Americans, an insult to everyone’s intelligence finally it is an insult to the office of the President
Serious questions have been asked as to why are the Republicans voters so craven and plumb for politicians who do not serve their interests on important issues such as the economy and health care. Recently Jonathan Haidt on Edge published a paper on what makes people vote Republican along with responses from other writers. Its interesting reading.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html
Would I be too bold to say that if the Republicans win it will be a slow death for liberal America indeed America itself as it descends into a circus freak of a country with Nuclear weapons. America’s standing is low with the rest of the world at the moment, Obama would go a long way to repair the damage of the Bush years. If McCain wins a cry of despair and disappointment will be clearly audible across the world.
David Cameron is a Martin Amis hilariously and rather accurately described him as a “pretty boy pretending to give a shit” I think he is a great big fucking fake. At least Palin actually believes what she believes. Cameron I believe is simply out to make a name for himself. The smug pretension of pretending to care is exquisitely obvious. I can almost imagine him off camera saying to one of his aides “Ok time for me to do my thing in front of plebs”. His recent harangue at fat people and alcoholics taking responsibility is a perfect demonstration of his political opportunism and cynicism. There is surely a rational conversation to be had about obesity however his coded but obvious attack on the white working class is not it. His attack on alcoholics that they should take responsibility for their state is like telling a person who suffers from Prader Willie syndrome to stop eating. His policy is not compassionate conservatism nor is it practical common sense conservatism it is 1.a policy for doing nothing, ie its not up to Government its up to you. 2. When things go wrong or don’t get better don’t blame us you have only yourselves to blame.
Lets take two cases in point from the summer. One was the decision to reclassify Cannabis, second was the human embryo and fertilisation debate. Gordon Brown in true clunking fist fashion pressed ahead with the decision to upgrade the drug in the face of scientific research and police advice and a good degree of public opinion. All in a cynical ploy to curry favour with the Daily Mail and other Murdoch papers. Very few politicians are able to engage in rational discussion when it comes to drugs. The issue whether or not a drug should be legal or not is a pharmacological issue not a political one.
At lest Brown did the right thing with the abortion and fertilisation debate and bill. But why was people of religious conscience given a free vote? Why not subscribers to astrology charts given one as well? Cameron in another unprincipled sop wanted the right for women to have abortion cut down to 20 weeks in order to seem “reasonable”. Stem cell research which is potentially the most promising branch of the sciences to yield huge medical benefits to humans was stymied by Religious ignorance.The law was passed but it was a close call.
There is perfectly sound and reasonable arguments for upgrading Cannabis and opposing abortion however reason was few and far between on these issues. One cannot discount the negative and destructive role that the media plays in this. I think a good case can be made that the Murdoch press is perhaps the greatest threat to democracy we have in the UK.
Something needs to change, the anti intellectual streak in American politics is also worrying. The rest of the world has at times the misfortune to suffer whatever America does and what works there. So can we imagine in ten years someone like Iris Robinson running the UK. What is needed? Better education for sure. For people of clear thinking ability and reason to stand up and say enough of the bullshit. To pin down politicians on the specifics of policy as much as possible. To make politics as transparent and free of corruption and insider deals as possible. Let me say three words that we should deploy in our political discourse they are enough, Honesty, Reason and Evidence.
Best and be Well.
Michael Faulkner.
How relevant are politicians? Its an empirical question. How many laws do they pass. How powerful are they as opposed to Big business, the media and Religion? Who runs Britain is it the CBI as Monbiot thinks? Is it the Murdoch press? What has Gordon Brown really done? How important are Quangos and advisors and civil servants?
Is there such a thing now as rational political discourse? Or is it all mood music, shallow trite speeches and saccharine smile photo-ops and empty gone the next day headline grabbing sound bites? It really needs to be said that politics, British Politics anyway is boring. If your not actually involved in it ie an MP, civil servant, journalist I cannot see how you could sit through a hour of the house of Parliament without snorting speed. Take Gordon Brown a clever fellow no doubt and who can surely hold his own in a argument but when he appears on TV its “Bla Bla Bla” He is liable to induce narcolepsy in a child with ADHD. If Brown gets kicked out which seems likely he could always get a job selling sleeping pills on late Saturday night TV for people on a ecstasy comedown (perhaps it would not be sound marketing as he is already a sleeping pill) I’ve got it!-- simply put a speech of him on a loop on some backwater TV Station where Insomniacs can tune in and quickly doze off out only to wake up the next day on the floor with the TV still on.
Silliness aside as well as questions as to what he has actually done. He is an unelected Prime Minster. He has governed for well over a year now and the British Public have not been given a chance to decide whether they want him or not. I should also add that when they have been allowed to vote, Labour has done disastrously.
In America the situation is different as with everything its that much bigger, glitzier and gaudier. It needs to be said John McCain is to old to be President, he is well past retirement and according to Social Security Administration website there is a 10% chance that McCain will die in his first term. Needlessly to say this increases after the second term and is compounded by the stress of the Presidency (decisions, travelling etc). Now of course if he is President and does die or has a stroke then guess who does become president--you guessed it Sarah Palin the Iris Robinson of American Politics.
Sarah Palin is by her own admission a born again Christian. She has embraced Creationism which is no better than saying the earth is flat. Denied global warming and holds every kind of illiberal, intolerant view you can think off. She believes that its God’s will that America is in Iraq, asks Alaskans to pray for a oil pipeline and publicly stated that she would not support an abortion for her daughter even if she was raped. The Church she was raised in has some scary end of the world views. I would not be surprised to find her believing in the rapture or the end of days erupting out of a nuclear holocaust. Lest I be accused of picking on her because of Religion, she is simply not competent for the role of VP. Two years as Governor and before that Mayor of a small town who population is only 9,780 (2007). As way of comparison the town that I live- Comber, Northern Ireland has 8,933. I should add though that the figure for Comber was taken in 2001 and is likely to have increased since then. By way of interest we don’t have a full time police station and we don’t have a mayor. She has no foreign policy experience and has already made gaffs “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." Its not Tax payer funded. Her son is going to fight in Iraq I wonder if she could locate it on a map.
If irrationality and incompetence was not enough then try corruption. Palin is currently under investigation for abuse of power along with her expenses under scrutiny for misuse. So this is the woman who could one day have her hands on the Nuclear codes. Her appointment is nothing more than a cynical move by McCain to shore up support with the Christian right and possibly Hillary Clinton supports. It is an insult to Americans, an insult to everyone’s intelligence finally it is an insult to the office of the President
Serious questions have been asked as to why are the Republicans voters so craven and plumb for politicians who do not serve their interests on important issues such as the economy and health care. Recently Jonathan Haidt on Edge published a paper on what makes people vote Republican along with responses from other writers. Its interesting reading.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html
Would I be too bold to say that if the Republicans win it will be a slow death for liberal America indeed America itself as it descends into a circus freak of a country with Nuclear weapons. America’s standing is low with the rest of the world at the moment, Obama would go a long way to repair the damage of the Bush years. If McCain wins a cry of despair and disappointment will be clearly audible across the world.
David Cameron is a Martin Amis hilariously and rather accurately described him as a “pretty boy pretending to give a shit” I think he is a great big fucking fake. At least Palin actually believes what she believes. Cameron I believe is simply out to make a name for himself. The smug pretension of pretending to care is exquisitely obvious. I can almost imagine him off camera saying to one of his aides “Ok time for me to do my thing in front of plebs”. His recent harangue at fat people and alcoholics taking responsibility is a perfect demonstration of his political opportunism and cynicism. There is surely a rational conversation to be had about obesity however his coded but obvious attack on the white working class is not it. His attack on alcoholics that they should take responsibility for their state is like telling a person who suffers from Prader Willie syndrome to stop eating. His policy is not compassionate conservatism nor is it practical common sense conservatism it is 1.a policy for doing nothing, ie its not up to Government its up to you. 2. When things go wrong or don’t get better don’t blame us you have only yourselves to blame.
Lets take two cases in point from the summer. One was the decision to reclassify Cannabis, second was the human embryo and fertilisation debate. Gordon Brown in true clunking fist fashion pressed ahead with the decision to upgrade the drug in the face of scientific research and police advice and a good degree of public opinion. All in a cynical ploy to curry favour with the Daily Mail and other Murdoch papers. Very few politicians are able to engage in rational discussion when it comes to drugs. The issue whether or not a drug should be legal or not is a pharmacological issue not a political one.
At lest Brown did the right thing with the abortion and fertilisation debate and bill. But why was people of religious conscience given a free vote? Why not subscribers to astrology charts given one as well? Cameron in another unprincipled sop wanted the right for women to have abortion cut down to 20 weeks in order to seem “reasonable”. Stem cell research which is potentially the most promising branch of the sciences to yield huge medical benefits to humans was stymied by Religious ignorance.The law was passed but it was a close call.
There is perfectly sound and reasonable arguments for upgrading Cannabis and opposing abortion however reason was few and far between on these issues. One cannot discount the negative and destructive role that the media plays in this. I think a good case can be made that the Murdoch press is perhaps the greatest threat to democracy we have in the UK.
Something needs to change, the anti intellectual streak in American politics is also worrying. The rest of the world has at times the misfortune to suffer whatever America does and what works there. So can we imagine in ten years someone like Iris Robinson running the UK. What is needed? Better education for sure. For people of clear thinking ability and reason to stand up and say enough of the bullshit. To pin down politicians on the specifics of policy as much as possible. To make politics as transparent and free of corruption and insider deals as possible. Let me say three words that we should deploy in our political discourse they are enough, Honesty, Reason and Evidence.
Best and be Well.
Michael Faulkner.
The Wire. Its all Connected
Its nice being wrong. That’s not a comment that is usually uttered or seen in a sentence. We humans don’t like to be wrong. Even when “we’re wrong we’re right” and dig our heels in and redouble our efforts even if it’s folly and we know it. “Some people would sooner die than think” wrote Bertrand Russell. For me I always try and live up to what Marcus Aurelius wrote of his adopted father Antoninus and which was no doubt a exhortation to himself that we be “delighted to be shown a better way”.
This delight has enraptured me several times in the past and no doubt will continue. I remember the first time it happened. I was twelve years old and me and my friends were fanatical playstation gamers. Via my cousin I had introduced my friends to a game called Resident Evil, a survival horror game which placed more emphasis on thinking and planning than on mindlessly shooting. It was also uniquely unnerving, heralding that a new era in computer games had been lunched. We all loved it and thought it was the “best” game ever. It was defended to the death in arguments with others especially against Tomb Raider whom we thought (quite rightly) was overblown, boring and “crap” to control. For many hours my brain was engaged in arguments with unseen games reviewers and opinion pieces that simply did not “get” Resident Evil.
Then I played a demo of Metal Gear Solid.
Very quickly almost like a curtain being drawn back to let in the sun, Metal Gear Solid swept always almost instantly the belief that Resident Evil was the best. It was several degrees greater both in terms of plot, voice acting and replay value. It was though the introduction of Stealth gameplay and the necessary use of intelligence (goal making, problem solving, analysis and planning) that made it original. Resident Evil may have laid the foundations but MGS took it to previously unimaginable realms. The boss battles is a case in point. The duels were no point and shoot affair requiring both dextrous fingers and lateral thinking.
Though one game had been replaced with another it did not shift the actual thinking that lay behind them. Successive “paradigm” shifting experiences and “thinking about thinking” itself has left me more open and less sure about being utterly certain. The caveat of course comes from another great paradigm changer that we should “be open minded but not so open minded that our brains fall out”. Or that we should know “less and less about more and more”.
One key shift was less sudden but just as enveloping and exciting. I have been long a fan of The Sopranos, the HBO television drama. It was simply the most absorbing, intense and rewarding TV show for years. Sopranos (HBO) seemed to operate on different rules than other drams. If you peer closely though you find that the Sopranos structurally speaking is quite similar to say Northern Exposure or Twin Peaks but it’s the content, the camera angles, the lighting, the fashion, the use of real locations that elevates The Sopranos into the sublime.
Sometime near the end of 2006 my friend un-dramatically mentioned to me that a TV critic has stated that The Wire and The Shield where the best things on TV which incidentally were both on FX. We watched a small portion, understanding it was not fair game so to speak to simply wade in mid episode mid season to judge something. Of course-- we weren’t impressed, but kept it in mind. I used to work in a video store, it was my job to spread little germs either cynically (by company orders) to sell people stuff or which I more enjoyed getting to show people great movies they might enjoy. I was like a good waiter who recommends complimentary wine with a meal or a literature inclined doctor who recommends a depressed patient something inspiring to read. On Christmas eve I recommend the show to a customer to whom I had a wonderful conversation with. He bought the show and his little journey began.
In that time me and my friend had watched a few good episodes and were warming nicely to it. Back at the store the customer came back to tell me that he loved it, that it was probably the best thing he ever saw. He had not finished the show but was well onto doing so. Enthusiasm which is infectious must of rubbed off on me and we began one of those great “blokee” conversations were we were both on exactly the same level. After the conversation I shortly watched a few more episodes and me and my friend were both smiling with the realisation that we had stumbled upon a hidden gem. It was not until maybe the fourth or fifth episode that it really flowered. When you become enraptured by something it has a kind of cascading effect where you become totally absorbed into it. As Charlie Brooker wrote of the show “prepare to obsess”. It is surprising but everyone who watches the show marvels at it with real zeal. Another customer and now friend a local novelist has similar high thoughts of the show.
Despite the brilliance of the first season it was not until the second season that I had some thoughts that might be better than The Sopranos. These thoughts hovered around season three and four. It was not until completing season four and considering what the writers and creators had pulled of in season 3 and how it could have derailed the show that left me no doubts. Despite the caveats of what I wrote above I believe a case can be made that The Wire is simply TV’s greatest drama and one perhaps that will not bettered for a very long time. First though I want to mention what can seem a somewhat childish thing of calling something best and saying something is better than it. Its not like I fall out of love with the previous highly esteemed work. Resident Evil and the Sopranos are still respected. The Sopranos remains one of the boldest and entertaining shows around. Only that like reaching a plateau on a mountain which offers stunning views of the landscape, you discovers that above it lies a better vantage, a higher cliff upon which to look over the landscape. The Wire like Metal Gear is simply another notch up the mountain.
The first thing to be said of The Wire when one begins to look beneath the surface is how much of an outsider it is. I’m sure you noticed that most American TV shows are either based in LA or NYC. Either that or shot on a studio lot. The Sopranos only slightly goes beyond New York into New Jersey which is just across the Hudson river. Most people who work in the film and television industry are products of film school. They serve apprenticeships as runners and other nobodies while chipping away at getting a shot at something. They come up through the ranks learning what’s expected and what isn’t. They learn the all to obvious truth of the pernicious role of advertising commercials on a show’s content and the strict guidelines governing content enforced by the networks. David Chase the creator of The Sopranos came from film school and started out as a story editor. Many of the house writers on the show such as Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess are career TV writers. In one or their commentaries they talk about the structure of The Sopranos as using the ABC method of storytelling a TV staple. Ie big story and two smaller stories filling out the big one. The scenes in the episode interweave around the 3 stories.
This of course takes nothing away from The Sopranos but The Wire is a different species of animal altogether. Firstly its in Baltimore mostly west Baltimore, as far away from the glories of Hollywood or the trappings of Manhattan as you can get. It deals mostly with the underclass, the black underclass. In fact one of the many remarkable things about The Wire is its prevalence of African Americans. The nuances in the writing of these characters and acting on display which defy any other TV show with the possible exception of Roots. This is of course no accident nor is it a politically motivated gesture, its simply verisimilitude. As Baltimore is mostly a black city and the stories mostly focus on black people from all nooks and crannies, dark alleyways and marble floored corridors of the powerful and the powerless.
The strange and original nature of the show has a lot to do with the creators. The principal creator is David Simon, a former investigative journalist for the Baltimore Sun. Simon wrote the excellently observed Homicide A year on the Killing Streets which was turned into the acclaimed TV show Homicide. The other creator is Ed Burns a former cop with the Baltimore city police and retired school teacher in the same city. Simon and Burns have long worked together producing the HBO mini movie adapted from Simon’s book The Corner. You cannot fail to notice that not only have both men lived and worked in the city but have been surrounded by the very milieu they depict.
If this was not enough, they have assembled a mugs line-up of some the best and most recognised novelists working in crime fiction. George Pelecanos, Richard Price, Dennis Lehane and Joy Lusco. Many of the directors have roots in independent cinema or have worked on shows like The Shield or The Sopranos.
This translates into something that has never been seen on TV before and one rarely glimpsed on film either. To start with traditional TV storytelling was dumped on the street like an empty vial of dope. Simon was conscious right from the start to avoid the typical all problems resolved at the end of episode structure. The Wire develops slowly, over the course of 13 episodes. There is no instant gratification and pay offs per episode. Simon’s analogy was with novels. Novels are a fine example were characters and complex situations are slowly and gradually built up. This is of course not to say that Simon and his team embrace an aesthetic of post-modern randomness and lax storytelling. Quite the opposite, there is considerable time spent investigating characters, their internal self-contradictions and how they relate to the outside world and the institutions they are trapped in. McNulty is a fine example of this. He is neither a crusading cop or one that acts out of rational self interest. Its not clear to us nor I would add to McNulty himself that when he mouths off to the Judge at the start of the series that he is intending to kick off a “shit storm” which ultimately sees him exiled to the “boat patrol”. McNulty’s home life is a mess, his partners (both work and sexual) frequently distrust and despair of him, his pursuit of criminals is not out of duty or justice but more a kind of thrilling engagement with cunning adversaries. “stupid criminals make for stupid cops” “I’m proud to be chasing these motherfuckers” he opines.
The show operates on a kind of evolutionary principle. each episode, each series, each character becomes increasingly complex as the show goes on. Season one is “relatively” straight forward, one long police investigation into a drug crew. It covers such themes as institutional dysfunction, the paradoxical effects of capitalism, the Hobbesian trap of Omar, Stringer and Avon. By Season two these themes are elaborated upon along with themes of port corruption and the death of the working class. The Third season arguably the most complex juggles street wars, drug legislation, reform, political intrigue, more corruption, and much much more. The truth is that miss an episode or two and you will fail to understand the whole thing. This is a sad fact and perhaps the reason why the show isn’t as popular as it should be. On a side note a fun game to play in later seasons is to link all the characters by using only one or two intermediaries. Eg Stringer and Carcetti are linked by Senator Davis. Or Avon and Frank Sobotka are linked via Sergei the Russian. The finales are masterpieces of narrative culmination and editing. One perhaps would have to go as far back as the Godfather to see how a complex story is resolved through parallel editing and multiple unfolding climaxes in such a brilliant way.
I mentioned the remarkable feat of so many good African American actors in such unique roles, though really all of its characters are wonderful creations. It’s almost a unpardonable sin to mention one actor especially but I’ll do it anyway. “Cool Lester smooth Freamon” played by Clarke Peters. The Bunk “happy now bitch” played by Wendell Pierce. Lt “my office” Daniels by Lance Reddick. “We got ourselves a inelastic product here” Stringer Bell Idris Elba (a Londoner) and of course Omar Little “The Cheese stands alone” gay stick-up thug played by Michael K Williams. McNulty played by Dominic West I’ve mentioned, There is Thomas Carcetti played by Aiden Gillen, John Doman who plays boss from hell William Rawls. Quite possibly the most touching performance of the show belongs to Chris Bauer as doomed union chief Frank Sobotka. It has been remarked from time to time that females are not heavily “represented” to use a modish PC term in the show. Though this is true what female characters the show does give us have been utterly unforgettable as witness Snoop played by Felicia Pearson and Det Greggs by Sonja Sohn.
There is so much to recommend this show, no review or missive could ever do it full justice or persuade people that it’s essential viewing. For myself the key that the show’s importance hangs on, its most vital contribution among many is its political engagement or rather its fury.
It is an angry show and David Simon is an angry man. Angry and depressed at the utter indifference that the ruling elite along with the media view cites such as Baltimore. Baltimore could stand in for any number of American inner urban areas. Take Washington the nations capital, on the outskirts of that cities political and tourist friendly centre there is a poverty stricken underclass mostly black. It is almost surreal like the scene where McNulty having to “babysit” Bubbles by taking him to kids Soccer game. Bubbles (a dope addict and police snitch) gazes on the rich middle class houses and people in perhaps the same way that peasant Italian immigrants may have stared upon New York when first entering the country at the start of the century.
Simon and his team poses some stark questions of Baltimore and America at large. How well is the police actually operating? What is its primary goal? Is the war on drugs winnable? Is it even right to call it a war? Should drugs even be criminalised? Billions of dollars are spent in the drug war yet schools are under-funded and mis-managed, the children who fail to get an education are new recruits for the drug trade how can we let this continue? How conducive to a civil society is it that politics is a game of manipulation and cynical self advancement and the cult of personality?
The Wire is likely to shatter whatever pre-conceived political views you may have, liberal or conservative. The show does at times become politically didactic and darkly cynical. On other networks some would have called this biased, socially irresponsible and depressing. It’s easy to counter such views by saying that The Wire is alone amongst a maelstrom of nauseatingly sweet American fantasies such as Lost, Heroes, Sex in the City and Desperate Housewives and other pop culture fair. Lest I pick on easy targets-- in my comfortably white European opinion I think the Wire has done more for representing the American underclass (especially black) than a trailer load of Rap Albums and MTV videos or the entire back catalogue of Spike Lee.
It is utterly refreshing to have ones views and opinions and expectations challenged in such a exciting original way. The Wire deserves its reputation as not only the greatest TV show ever made but among the greatest cultural artefacts that America has produced. In time it deserves entry into the American library of congress (which protects and upholds important cultural artefacts.) It also deserves to be shown in Schools and Colleges, for history and sociology students. In time it will become an important visual historical document of a largely abandoned and ignored America.
If that sounds pretentious then I hand over to Charlie Brooker who concludes his review of the show with characteristically stark conclusions “If you like good drama then you have absolutely no excuse for not indulging in this, it is just F***ing brilliant”
Best and Be well.
Michael Faulkner.
This delight has enraptured me several times in the past and no doubt will continue. I remember the first time it happened. I was twelve years old and me and my friends were fanatical playstation gamers. Via my cousin I had introduced my friends to a game called Resident Evil, a survival horror game which placed more emphasis on thinking and planning than on mindlessly shooting. It was also uniquely unnerving, heralding that a new era in computer games had been lunched. We all loved it and thought it was the “best” game ever. It was defended to the death in arguments with others especially against Tomb Raider whom we thought (quite rightly) was overblown, boring and “crap” to control. For many hours my brain was engaged in arguments with unseen games reviewers and opinion pieces that simply did not “get” Resident Evil.
Then I played a demo of Metal Gear Solid.
Very quickly almost like a curtain being drawn back to let in the sun, Metal Gear Solid swept always almost instantly the belief that Resident Evil was the best. It was several degrees greater both in terms of plot, voice acting and replay value. It was though the introduction of Stealth gameplay and the necessary use of intelligence (goal making, problem solving, analysis and planning) that made it original. Resident Evil may have laid the foundations but MGS took it to previously unimaginable realms. The boss battles is a case in point. The duels were no point and shoot affair requiring both dextrous fingers and lateral thinking.
Though one game had been replaced with another it did not shift the actual thinking that lay behind them. Successive “paradigm” shifting experiences and “thinking about thinking” itself has left me more open and less sure about being utterly certain. The caveat of course comes from another great paradigm changer that we should “be open minded but not so open minded that our brains fall out”. Or that we should know “less and less about more and more”.
One key shift was less sudden but just as enveloping and exciting. I have been long a fan of The Sopranos, the HBO television drama. It was simply the most absorbing, intense and rewarding TV show for years. Sopranos (HBO) seemed to operate on different rules than other drams. If you peer closely though you find that the Sopranos structurally speaking is quite similar to say Northern Exposure or Twin Peaks but it’s the content, the camera angles, the lighting, the fashion, the use of real locations that elevates The Sopranos into the sublime.
Sometime near the end of 2006 my friend un-dramatically mentioned to me that a TV critic has stated that The Wire and The Shield where the best things on TV which incidentally were both on FX. We watched a small portion, understanding it was not fair game so to speak to simply wade in mid episode mid season to judge something. Of course-- we weren’t impressed, but kept it in mind. I used to work in a video store, it was my job to spread little germs either cynically (by company orders) to sell people stuff or which I more enjoyed getting to show people great movies they might enjoy. I was like a good waiter who recommends complimentary wine with a meal or a literature inclined doctor who recommends a depressed patient something inspiring to read. On Christmas eve I recommend the show to a customer to whom I had a wonderful conversation with. He bought the show and his little journey began.
In that time me and my friend had watched a few good episodes and were warming nicely to it. Back at the store the customer came back to tell me that he loved it, that it was probably the best thing he ever saw. He had not finished the show but was well onto doing so. Enthusiasm which is infectious must of rubbed off on me and we began one of those great “blokee” conversations were we were both on exactly the same level. After the conversation I shortly watched a few more episodes and me and my friend were both smiling with the realisation that we had stumbled upon a hidden gem. It was not until maybe the fourth or fifth episode that it really flowered. When you become enraptured by something it has a kind of cascading effect where you become totally absorbed into it. As Charlie Brooker wrote of the show “prepare to obsess”. It is surprising but everyone who watches the show marvels at it with real zeal. Another customer and now friend a local novelist has similar high thoughts of the show.
Despite the brilliance of the first season it was not until the second season that I had some thoughts that might be better than The Sopranos. These thoughts hovered around season three and four. It was not until completing season four and considering what the writers and creators had pulled of in season 3 and how it could have derailed the show that left me no doubts. Despite the caveats of what I wrote above I believe a case can be made that The Wire is simply TV’s greatest drama and one perhaps that will not bettered for a very long time. First though I want to mention what can seem a somewhat childish thing of calling something best and saying something is better than it. Its not like I fall out of love with the previous highly esteemed work. Resident Evil and the Sopranos are still respected. The Sopranos remains one of the boldest and entertaining shows around. Only that like reaching a plateau on a mountain which offers stunning views of the landscape, you discovers that above it lies a better vantage, a higher cliff upon which to look over the landscape. The Wire like Metal Gear is simply another notch up the mountain.
The first thing to be said of The Wire when one begins to look beneath the surface is how much of an outsider it is. I’m sure you noticed that most American TV shows are either based in LA or NYC. Either that or shot on a studio lot. The Sopranos only slightly goes beyond New York into New Jersey which is just across the Hudson river. Most people who work in the film and television industry are products of film school. They serve apprenticeships as runners and other nobodies while chipping away at getting a shot at something. They come up through the ranks learning what’s expected and what isn’t. They learn the all to obvious truth of the pernicious role of advertising commercials on a show’s content and the strict guidelines governing content enforced by the networks. David Chase the creator of The Sopranos came from film school and started out as a story editor. Many of the house writers on the show such as Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess are career TV writers. In one or their commentaries they talk about the structure of The Sopranos as using the ABC method of storytelling a TV staple. Ie big story and two smaller stories filling out the big one. The scenes in the episode interweave around the 3 stories.
This of course takes nothing away from The Sopranos but The Wire is a different species of animal altogether. Firstly its in Baltimore mostly west Baltimore, as far away from the glories of Hollywood or the trappings of Manhattan as you can get. It deals mostly with the underclass, the black underclass. In fact one of the many remarkable things about The Wire is its prevalence of African Americans. The nuances in the writing of these characters and acting on display which defy any other TV show with the possible exception of Roots. This is of course no accident nor is it a politically motivated gesture, its simply verisimilitude. As Baltimore is mostly a black city and the stories mostly focus on black people from all nooks and crannies, dark alleyways and marble floored corridors of the powerful and the powerless.
The strange and original nature of the show has a lot to do with the creators. The principal creator is David Simon, a former investigative journalist for the Baltimore Sun. Simon wrote the excellently observed Homicide A year on the Killing Streets which was turned into the acclaimed TV show Homicide. The other creator is Ed Burns a former cop with the Baltimore city police and retired school teacher in the same city. Simon and Burns have long worked together producing the HBO mini movie adapted from Simon’s book The Corner. You cannot fail to notice that not only have both men lived and worked in the city but have been surrounded by the very milieu they depict.
If this was not enough, they have assembled a mugs line-up of some the best and most recognised novelists working in crime fiction. George Pelecanos, Richard Price, Dennis Lehane and Joy Lusco. Many of the directors have roots in independent cinema or have worked on shows like The Shield or The Sopranos.
This translates into something that has never been seen on TV before and one rarely glimpsed on film either. To start with traditional TV storytelling was dumped on the street like an empty vial of dope. Simon was conscious right from the start to avoid the typical all problems resolved at the end of episode structure. The Wire develops slowly, over the course of 13 episodes. There is no instant gratification and pay offs per episode. Simon’s analogy was with novels. Novels are a fine example were characters and complex situations are slowly and gradually built up. This is of course not to say that Simon and his team embrace an aesthetic of post-modern randomness and lax storytelling. Quite the opposite, there is considerable time spent investigating characters, their internal self-contradictions and how they relate to the outside world and the institutions they are trapped in. McNulty is a fine example of this. He is neither a crusading cop or one that acts out of rational self interest. Its not clear to us nor I would add to McNulty himself that when he mouths off to the Judge at the start of the series that he is intending to kick off a “shit storm” which ultimately sees him exiled to the “boat patrol”. McNulty’s home life is a mess, his partners (both work and sexual) frequently distrust and despair of him, his pursuit of criminals is not out of duty or justice but more a kind of thrilling engagement with cunning adversaries. “stupid criminals make for stupid cops” “I’m proud to be chasing these motherfuckers” he opines.
The show operates on a kind of evolutionary principle. each episode, each series, each character becomes increasingly complex as the show goes on. Season one is “relatively” straight forward, one long police investigation into a drug crew. It covers such themes as institutional dysfunction, the paradoxical effects of capitalism, the Hobbesian trap of Omar, Stringer and Avon. By Season two these themes are elaborated upon along with themes of port corruption and the death of the working class. The Third season arguably the most complex juggles street wars, drug legislation, reform, political intrigue, more corruption, and much much more. The truth is that miss an episode or two and you will fail to understand the whole thing. This is a sad fact and perhaps the reason why the show isn’t as popular as it should be. On a side note a fun game to play in later seasons is to link all the characters by using only one or two intermediaries. Eg Stringer and Carcetti are linked by Senator Davis. Or Avon and Frank Sobotka are linked via Sergei the Russian. The finales are masterpieces of narrative culmination and editing. One perhaps would have to go as far back as the Godfather to see how a complex story is resolved through parallel editing and multiple unfolding climaxes in such a brilliant way.
I mentioned the remarkable feat of so many good African American actors in such unique roles, though really all of its characters are wonderful creations. It’s almost a unpardonable sin to mention one actor especially but I’ll do it anyway. “Cool Lester smooth Freamon” played by Clarke Peters. The Bunk “happy now bitch” played by Wendell Pierce. Lt “my office” Daniels by Lance Reddick. “We got ourselves a inelastic product here” Stringer Bell Idris Elba (a Londoner) and of course Omar Little “The Cheese stands alone” gay stick-up thug played by Michael K Williams. McNulty played by Dominic West I’ve mentioned, There is Thomas Carcetti played by Aiden Gillen, John Doman who plays boss from hell William Rawls. Quite possibly the most touching performance of the show belongs to Chris Bauer as doomed union chief Frank Sobotka. It has been remarked from time to time that females are not heavily “represented” to use a modish PC term in the show. Though this is true what female characters the show does give us have been utterly unforgettable as witness Snoop played by Felicia Pearson and Det Greggs by Sonja Sohn.
There is so much to recommend this show, no review or missive could ever do it full justice or persuade people that it’s essential viewing. For myself the key that the show’s importance hangs on, its most vital contribution among many is its political engagement or rather its fury.
It is an angry show and David Simon is an angry man. Angry and depressed at the utter indifference that the ruling elite along with the media view cites such as Baltimore. Baltimore could stand in for any number of American inner urban areas. Take Washington the nations capital, on the outskirts of that cities political and tourist friendly centre there is a poverty stricken underclass mostly black. It is almost surreal like the scene where McNulty having to “babysit” Bubbles by taking him to kids Soccer game. Bubbles (a dope addict and police snitch) gazes on the rich middle class houses and people in perhaps the same way that peasant Italian immigrants may have stared upon New York when first entering the country at the start of the century.
Simon and his team poses some stark questions of Baltimore and America at large. How well is the police actually operating? What is its primary goal? Is the war on drugs winnable? Is it even right to call it a war? Should drugs even be criminalised? Billions of dollars are spent in the drug war yet schools are under-funded and mis-managed, the children who fail to get an education are new recruits for the drug trade how can we let this continue? How conducive to a civil society is it that politics is a game of manipulation and cynical self advancement and the cult of personality?
The Wire is likely to shatter whatever pre-conceived political views you may have, liberal or conservative. The show does at times become politically didactic and darkly cynical. On other networks some would have called this biased, socially irresponsible and depressing. It’s easy to counter such views by saying that The Wire is alone amongst a maelstrom of nauseatingly sweet American fantasies such as Lost, Heroes, Sex in the City and Desperate Housewives and other pop culture fair. Lest I pick on easy targets-- in my comfortably white European opinion I think the Wire has done more for representing the American underclass (especially black) than a trailer load of Rap Albums and MTV videos or the entire back catalogue of Spike Lee.
It is utterly refreshing to have ones views and opinions and expectations challenged in such a exciting original way. The Wire deserves its reputation as not only the greatest TV show ever made but among the greatest cultural artefacts that America has produced. In time it deserves entry into the American library of congress (which protects and upholds important cultural artefacts.) It also deserves to be shown in Schools and Colleges, for history and sociology students. In time it will become an important visual historical document of a largely abandoned and ignored America.
If that sounds pretentious then I hand over to Charlie Brooker who concludes his review of the show with characteristically stark conclusions “If you like good drama then you have absolutely no excuse for not indulging in this, it is just F***ing brilliant”
Best and Be well.
Michael Faulkner.
Monday, 8 September 2008
Some thoughts on the William Crawley interview with Richard Dawkins.
I watched this very good interview between fellow Ulsterman William Crawley and Richard Dawkins again on BBC2. He did a very good job of pushing Dawkins into a few corners over a few things. Crawley seems an intelligent fellow and he was much more informed and professional than most other people who critique Dawkins. In any case I sent this little comment to his BBC blog.
1. The term delusion that Dawkins uses is applied to a fixed false belief that a person declares. Its strange that Dawkins does not mention Freud and his essay on the future of an illusion where he correctly notes the wish element in belief. Dawkins defines his use from the Penguin English Dictionary as a “a false belief or an impression” he uses Microsoft spell checker’s term “a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence.” Though Dawkins can at times be quite mischievous his uses of the term is not Ad-hominem and it captures true supernatural- Religious belief perfectly.
2. As to the fine tuning argument. Here is my own shot at it. Lets take the conclusion that if one of the constants was off then we would not be here. Life could not arise because of it. Now what other conclusion is there? The conclusion is actually contained in the premise. Anything else is superfluous. Saying that there must a creator is inference, inference tainted by human wish thinking. It’s a little like the story about the bird that drinks water from a puddle in the ground. How great it thinks to itself, that this puddle is so perfect for me to drink from. If it was not here I would go thirsty-it must off been designed. Of course it’s a pure accident that a puddle happens to occur just like the fact the we exist after 14 billion years since the big bang and after millions of years of evolution. Religious people think the physical constants argument is a good one its not. All it revels is the bias of human reasoning and wish thinking. Thinking that we are special and the end product of something (evolution or creation). Thinking that we are the centre of the universe. All the evidence demonstrates-all of it clearly shows that we are not special in any kind of teleological or divine sense.
3. It was a good point you made William about the ultimate regress argument and the fact that it can de-facto rule out using God as an explanation.(ie who made God argument) However it does not work in practice. In order for God to be invoked as a explanation for something he or it needs to be discovered. It needs to be able to be brought under the umbrella of reason and science. In order for it to become an explanatory tool it needs to be used to make predictions, it needs to be free to be tested, used to explain facts about the world better than any other theory. However the current state of knowledge shows every sign that the universe is not the product of a supernatural intelligence, never mind that we are created with some kind of plan. In short in order to work with the theory that God created the universe or sent his son to die for our sins say then we need clear, unequivocal evidence for God. Needlessly to say we have been wainting for this for a few thousand years and will not doubt be continuing to wait. “the messiah may come but he may tarry”
4. As for sectarian schooling. I think Dawkins was spot on, in fact he did not press the point hard enough. The northern Irish troubles could have been resolved as simply as promoting secularism in schools and abolishing faith schools. At the very least the bitterness and fear of the other would have been moot. I come from Northern Ireland myself and know well the pernicious influence of living in two “communities”
Can I just say William I think you did a very professional interview.
Best and be well
Michael.
1. The term delusion that Dawkins uses is applied to a fixed false belief that a person declares. Its strange that Dawkins does not mention Freud and his essay on the future of an illusion where he correctly notes the wish element in belief. Dawkins defines his use from the Penguin English Dictionary as a “a false belief or an impression” he uses Microsoft spell checker’s term “a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence.” Though Dawkins can at times be quite mischievous his uses of the term is not Ad-hominem and it captures true supernatural- Religious belief perfectly.
2. As to the fine tuning argument. Here is my own shot at it. Lets take the conclusion that if one of the constants was off then we would not be here. Life could not arise because of it. Now what other conclusion is there? The conclusion is actually contained in the premise. Anything else is superfluous. Saying that there must a creator is inference, inference tainted by human wish thinking. It’s a little like the story about the bird that drinks water from a puddle in the ground. How great it thinks to itself, that this puddle is so perfect for me to drink from. If it was not here I would go thirsty-it must off been designed. Of course it’s a pure accident that a puddle happens to occur just like the fact the we exist after 14 billion years since the big bang and after millions of years of evolution. Religious people think the physical constants argument is a good one its not. All it revels is the bias of human reasoning and wish thinking. Thinking that we are special and the end product of something (evolution or creation). Thinking that we are the centre of the universe. All the evidence demonstrates-all of it clearly shows that we are not special in any kind of teleological or divine sense.
3. It was a good point you made William about the ultimate regress argument and the fact that it can de-facto rule out using God as an explanation.(ie who made God argument) However it does not work in practice. In order for God to be invoked as a explanation for something he or it needs to be discovered. It needs to be able to be brought under the umbrella of reason and science. In order for it to become an explanatory tool it needs to be used to make predictions, it needs to be free to be tested, used to explain facts about the world better than any other theory. However the current state of knowledge shows every sign that the universe is not the product of a supernatural intelligence, never mind that we are created with some kind of plan. In short in order to work with the theory that God created the universe or sent his son to die for our sins say then we need clear, unequivocal evidence for God. Needlessly to say we have been wainting for this for a few thousand years and will not doubt be continuing to wait. “the messiah may come but he may tarry”
4. As for sectarian schooling. I think Dawkins was spot on, in fact he did not press the point hard enough. The northern Irish troubles could have been resolved as simply as promoting secularism in schools and abolishing faith schools. At the very least the bitterness and fear of the other would have been moot. I come from Northern Ireland myself and know well the pernicious influence of living in two “communities”
Can I just say William I think you did a very professional interview.
Best and be well
Michael.
God on Trial.
Here is a comment i posted on the Guardian's comment is free in response to a theologian's egregious op-ed.
Here is the article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/07/religion
I wrote in response.
Sentimental, condescending, self-righteous drivel.
But thanks for telling me the conclusion to the BBC show God On Trial (missed that)
Let us entertain the notion of theodicy.
Two thousand years after the coming of Christ, when human society, knowledge and technology had ascended to a previously unimaginable apex-what were we rewarded with? Fascism, the holocaust, the A-Bomb, Dresden, the rape of Nanking don’t forget also millions who perished in the Gulags and under the yoke of Stalin. Christians have been waiting for Christ to return trailing clouds of silver glory to judge the living and the dead for over two millennia. (it is getting a bit long in the tooth We are also told that things are going to get very bad indeed before this momentous event occurs. I am of course talking about the rapture. Would any reasonable person of any belief not wonder after viewing the calamity of fascism and its brutal demise-wonder or worry how bad things will have to get before Jesus returns. If there is a God, a Jewish or Christian one he has just sat through the worst example of human outrage in history. Even if his plans for rapture were still a bit off would it not be merciful or loving to prevent the disaster? Or at least attempt to redress the carnage? A miracle perhaps?--all German guns suddenly stopped working upon the invasion of Poland?
There is of course no rebuttal to this, of how a loving just God could stand by and let this misery unfold. Justin writes that suffering is explained through human free will and that God has on countless occasions shown love and compassion. Could anyone provide a clear unequivocal example of this without recourse to the bible? Furthermore what has childhood leukaemia, Downs Syndrome or any of the numerous genetic diseases got to do with the notion of free will? How can free will or unconditional love explain away whole families of women ravaged by breast cancer or painfully having to surgically remove their breasts when they come of age in order not to end up like their unfortunate mothers?
Justin Thacker’s answer is not only an insult to our intelligence but our dignity as well. He bleats that Atheists just focus on the pain the “insane pain” of suffering. That is of course the dignified grown up way of behaving. Not running off somewhere to seek consolation in magic and fairy tales.
A wise mortal from the East once said that life was suffering that it was the first noble truth of existence. That everything that begins to exist will one day desist. Our suffering in this world is lessened by letting go of delusion, letting go of attachments and childish wish thinking. You simply live in the present and experience every moment as it comes. Suffering will come but we must face it stoically and with no illusions but the life hereafter or indeed this one.
Best and be well
Michael Faulkner.
Here is the article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/07/religion
I wrote in response.
Sentimental, condescending, self-righteous drivel.
But thanks for telling me the conclusion to the BBC show God On Trial (missed that)
Let us entertain the notion of theodicy.
Two thousand years after the coming of Christ, when human society, knowledge and technology had ascended to a previously unimaginable apex-what were we rewarded with? Fascism, the holocaust, the A-Bomb, Dresden, the rape of Nanking don’t forget also millions who perished in the Gulags and under the yoke of Stalin. Christians have been waiting for Christ to return trailing clouds of silver glory to judge the living and the dead for over two millennia. (it is getting a bit long in the tooth We are also told that things are going to get very bad indeed before this momentous event occurs. I am of course talking about the rapture. Would any reasonable person of any belief not wonder after viewing the calamity of fascism and its brutal demise-wonder or worry how bad things will have to get before Jesus returns. If there is a God, a Jewish or Christian one he has just sat through the worst example of human outrage in history. Even if his plans for rapture were still a bit off would it not be merciful or loving to prevent the disaster? Or at least attempt to redress the carnage? A miracle perhaps?--all German guns suddenly stopped working upon the invasion of Poland?
There is of course no rebuttal to this, of how a loving just God could stand by and let this misery unfold. Justin writes that suffering is explained through human free will and that God has on countless occasions shown love and compassion. Could anyone provide a clear unequivocal example of this without recourse to the bible? Furthermore what has childhood leukaemia, Downs Syndrome or any of the numerous genetic diseases got to do with the notion of free will? How can free will or unconditional love explain away whole families of women ravaged by breast cancer or painfully having to surgically remove their breasts when they come of age in order not to end up like their unfortunate mothers?
Justin Thacker’s answer is not only an insult to our intelligence but our dignity as well. He bleats that Atheists just focus on the pain the “insane pain” of suffering. That is of course the dignified grown up way of behaving. Not running off somewhere to seek consolation in magic and fairy tales.
A wise mortal from the East once said that life was suffering that it was the first noble truth of existence. That everything that begins to exist will one day desist. Our suffering in this world is lessened by letting go of delusion, letting go of attachments and childish wish thinking. You simply live in the present and experience every moment as it comes. Suffering will come but we must face it stoically and with no illusions but the life hereafter or indeed this one.
Best and be well
Michael Faulkner.
Friday, 5 September 2008
The Gaunt Delusion.
I look forward every week with a kind of perverse pleasure to read what Jon Gaunt has wrote in his column for the Sun Newspaper. A kind of guilty little pleasure. I can always count on good old Gaunt the hero of the working class, the fighter of bureaucratic injustice, the master of reasoned discourse in this spin-doctored to death hyper-mediated, liberal-run, Guardian controlled, BBC biased world.
So what was Gaunt up to this week on the 5th of September? This week he has been writing about Sarah Palin the Republican Vice Presidential nominee.
He begins his column with “Don’t you wish we had politicians like American Republican Sarah Palin instead of the identikit, spineless, amoebas that infest Westminster” Well yes if it means embracing an ex beauty queen, a creationist supporting, bible believing religious wing nut who asks her church to pray for multi million dollar pipeline for drilling oil. A global warming denier, who has no concern for the wildlife or natural beauty of Alaska in her pursuit of letting oil companies rape the land. A member of the NRA, who has Publicly stated that she would not support her own daughter to have an abortion even if she was raped. Oh did I also mention she under investigation for misuse of office. She has only two years of experience as a Governor and no foreign policy experience or any valid experience for the role of VP.
He then goes on to say “this woman has more balls than most British male MP’s” except she doesn’t. Ok I’m being too “literal” here so what’s this meant to mean, that it does not matter how idiotic or ignorant you are as long as your not a liberal, wail, and make up for ignorance with pugnacity then fine. Palin says it best herself, “a pit-bull with lipstick”
“a Feminist dream” Gaunt writes. Most feminists or anyone wanting to see the advancement of women would be aghast at this woman holding office. In fact her selection is nothing more than a cynical ploy by McCain to win over Hilary supporters and seduce the Christian right. This is a insult to women, who are expected to vote for someone just because they have a uterus. Palin is positively anti-woman. She opposes abortion, sex education and wants abstinence only taught in schools. I cannot stop myself from pointing out that this policy has failed miserably with her own daughter. Sex education and contraception are essential to a well functioning civil society and are central to the emancipation of women.
He then says Palins the “real thing” as opposed to Obama. What does that mean? I have no idea, Maybe cause she's small town, not a liberal or intellectual, a kind of person “you could have a drink with”. or is it because Obama’s black?
He writes off criticisms by writing this “the opposition are trying to undermine the messiah by criticising Palin’s daughter for getting pregnant and Sarah for wanting to keep it quite.”
This is incidental, its needs to be pointed that the Christian Right frequently paint themselves as great moralisers and role models for everyone else. Time and again they are unable to keep their house in order. The problem with Palin is that if McCain wins she is a heatbeat away from having control of the Nuclear button. Its been well documented the demented eschatology that Fundamentalist Christians subscribe to (Regan conducting briefings on the middle east as it conforms to biblical prophecy.) in the end though this is not about Religion its about competency. She has no experience for the role. All she is is a personality cult.
It also has to be said why is Gaunt so interested in American Politics? This is someone who constantly harps on about Britain and England and shows a disinterest and inwardness in his columns time and time again.
Could be something to do with the fact the paper is owned by Murdoch, a former Australian now American Citizen who exerts more control on the minds of working class Britain than any British politician.
Is Gaunt Mad? is he serious? or is he a fraud? or maybe he does not know any better?
Best.
Mike.
So what was Gaunt up to this week on the 5th of September? This week he has been writing about Sarah Palin the Republican Vice Presidential nominee.
He begins his column with “Don’t you wish we had politicians like American Republican Sarah Palin instead of the identikit, spineless, amoebas that infest Westminster” Well yes if it means embracing an ex beauty queen, a creationist supporting, bible believing religious wing nut who asks her church to pray for multi million dollar pipeline for drilling oil. A global warming denier, who has no concern for the wildlife or natural beauty of Alaska in her pursuit of letting oil companies rape the land. A member of the NRA, who has Publicly stated that she would not support her own daughter to have an abortion even if she was raped. Oh did I also mention she under investigation for misuse of office. She has only two years of experience as a Governor and no foreign policy experience or any valid experience for the role of VP.
He then goes on to say “this woman has more balls than most British male MP’s” except she doesn’t. Ok I’m being too “literal” here so what’s this meant to mean, that it does not matter how idiotic or ignorant you are as long as your not a liberal, wail, and make up for ignorance with pugnacity then fine. Palin says it best herself, “a pit-bull with lipstick”
“a Feminist dream” Gaunt writes. Most feminists or anyone wanting to see the advancement of women would be aghast at this woman holding office. In fact her selection is nothing more than a cynical ploy by McCain to win over Hilary supporters and seduce the Christian right. This is a insult to women, who are expected to vote for someone just because they have a uterus. Palin is positively anti-woman. She opposes abortion, sex education and wants abstinence only taught in schools. I cannot stop myself from pointing out that this policy has failed miserably with her own daughter. Sex education and contraception are essential to a well functioning civil society and are central to the emancipation of women.
He then says Palins the “real thing” as opposed to Obama. What does that mean? I have no idea, Maybe cause she's small town, not a liberal or intellectual, a kind of person “you could have a drink with”. or is it because Obama’s black?
He writes off criticisms by writing this “the opposition are trying to undermine the messiah by criticising Palin’s daughter for getting pregnant and Sarah for wanting to keep it quite.”
This is incidental, its needs to be pointed that the Christian Right frequently paint themselves as great moralisers and role models for everyone else. Time and again they are unable to keep their house in order. The problem with Palin is that if McCain wins she is a heatbeat away from having control of the Nuclear button. Its been well documented the demented eschatology that Fundamentalist Christians subscribe to (Regan conducting briefings on the middle east as it conforms to biblical prophecy.) in the end though this is not about Religion its about competency. She has no experience for the role. All she is is a personality cult.
It also has to be said why is Gaunt so interested in American Politics? This is someone who constantly harps on about Britain and England and shows a disinterest and inwardness in his columns time and time again.
Could be something to do with the fact the paper is owned by Murdoch, a former Australian now American Citizen who exerts more control on the minds of working class Britain than any British politician.
Is Gaunt Mad? is he serious? or is he a fraud? or maybe he does not know any better?
Best.
Mike.
Monday, 25 August 2008
Thoughts while reading Fight Club.
Anicca or Impermanence. All conditioned things eventually cease to exist. All things are in flux.
Dukkha or unsatisfactoriness or “dis-ease“. Nothing found in the physical world or even the psychological realm can bring lasting deep satisfaction.
Anatta or impersonality, or non-self. Each individual is subject to constant flux, there is no I, no central core or essence.
The three marks of existence (Buddhist teaching)
“Everything is changing, nothing is static, everything is falling apart”
The "teachings" of Tyler Durden.
I decided to reread Chuck Palahniuk first novel Fight Club. I have a habit of looking up books or films and finding out when they were released or printed. I like to know what year it came out in and what I if anything was doing. Fight Club was first printed in 1996 and the film came out in 1999. For a human being a decade is a long time, plenty happens not only to the self but the world itself. Reflection is a curious quality we humans have. Like all other complex living things we have an awareness of night and day and the changing of the seasons. Our ability though to remember the past, infer from it and attach an emotional quality seems unique to our species. I don’t think we’re likely to hear reports from primatologists that haughty old chimps are rueing the day complaining it wasn’t like this in their time.
Us humans view the past with rose tinted lens as it where. Recently I have been taking another trip down memory lane. I decided to replay the magnificent Metal Gear Solid series. A computer game designed over twenty years spanning three Playstation consoles and ten years in its modern guise. The latest in the series features a nearly at deaths door Snake, (the games hero) who must solider on to complete his mission. I remember feeling slightly annoyed at the fact of playing an older Snake. Not because I have anything against old people.(in the legend of heroes, both Wayne and Eastwood have made great, old coffin dodging men of action) no it was that Snake was not my Snake! I was eleven when I first played Metal Gear Solid (1998 PS1) and I will always as it where remember him from that. Throughout the series Snake is never the exact same person twice. Drama insists on having arcs and catharsis. Michael Corleone is not the same person at the start of the Godfather as he is at the end nor is he the same “person” in the second or third Godfather film.
Us humans are a paradox, we don’t like change, yet become depressed by unending regularity. The perennial ring road on Sundays leading to the shopping centre. Calorie counting. Income tax returns. Car wash also on Sundays. We stay in the same job, Same marriage. Watch the same garbage on the TV. Same food. Same sex. Same and samey life until one day the pilot light in your cooker goes off and secretly you 24th floor apartment fills with Gas. Some point in the middle of the night while your flying at fifty thousand feet in the air, your fridge depressor clicks on, igniting a massive explosive and every crummy little bit of your life sails out past the floor to ceiling windows of your filing cabinet condominium flaming into the nights sky. “and they say these things happen” This is the start of the narrator decent from his boring life into the underworld of Fight Club.
Nothing is static, everything is changing, everything is falling apart. The final Metal Gear is filled with this sense of decay. That at once everything is changing and passing away but also as its creator Kojima points out filled with Nietzsche’s eternal return of the same. At one point Snake returning to a former mission site in permafrost Alaska where he hadn’t seen in nine years, glimpses an old surveillance camera. The game flashbacks to the decade before (with old PS1 graphics) the camera then falls and falls apart upon hitting the ground. Snakes old body takes a pummelling during the game, and visibly decays throughout it. “Even the Mona Lisa’s falling apart” writes Palahnuik.
The real paradox is our modern way of life. For roughly a hundred and ninety four or if you differ ninety four thousand years humans were wanders, nomads, hunter gatherers. Every day was a gruelling trial of existence. Men teamed up alongside their fathers, brothers and uncles and went out into the jungle or the savannah or forest and hunted antelope or elk or deer. When not eking out a meagre existence or overcome by gum disease or other unseen and unknown germs and parasites, men would team up and raid other tribes for brides and concubines. Forget football or Smackdown or Playstation this is living, this is what our prefrontal lobes and adrenal glands are for! Life was one long video game of hide and seek and club and be clubbed. Depending on your sex or disposition you might be calling me either an ape in the pejorative sense or ask me where and how do we recreate this primordial society. Recall though Hobbes accurate observation that men’s lives were “nasty, brutish and short” few males lived past their twenties. Still interested?
It is upon this paradox that strode Palahniuk’s book and Fincher’s film. Tossed like a hand grenade into middle America. A brick through the window of politically correct western society. An “assault” upon consumerism and its emasculating and infantilising influence on America men.
I mentioned that the book first appeared twelve years ago and the film nearly a decade ago. Fight Club was always written about as spearheading a Zeitgeist (a spirit of the times). Conjuring up images and feelings of an alienated, isolated, millennial fearing society, namely men. Technologically overwhelmed and divested of power by corporations and consumerism. This is the feeling one gets from Radiohead’s Ok Computer or watching the films of Michael Mann (Heat and the Insider) David Cronenburg’s Crash would be another contribution. TV’s the Sopranos wondered aloud about the state of the American male along with things like family, identity and individualism. In 2000 came Naomi Klein’s excellent No Logo Taking on the Brand Bullies.
As with everything things change, twelve years is a long time. In retrospection it’s the same as looking back from 1999 to 1987. The cold war was still ongoing, in my own country of Northern Ireland the troubles were still ongoing. South African apartheid was still ongoing. The music scene always touted as representing the times had the burgeoning rave culture. Computer games were still simplistic and 2D. Much the same in way of differences can be said of 1979 to 1968 or the affluence in Britain during the fifties compared with the harshness of the war years. Most people know that Britain was rationed (milk, eggs, meat, sugar were all on set limits) but this rationing continued even after the war finished.
Films and cultural products when viewed outside of their era can be seen as nothing more than a curiosity or a oddity. Jean Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960, France) would elicit bemused facial expressions of the young today. As would Hard Days Night (1964 UK) the film a surreal fantasy of the adventures of the pop band know as The Beatles. When me and my friend watched Easy Rider (1969 US) after the first five minutes we were like “what the hell is this?!)
We would naturally expect Fight Club to be no different. Perhaps I will display naivety when I say that nothing much as changed. Consumerism and its adverse effects are still ever present. The malignance of corporations is still present. Naomi Klein’s last book was on disaster capitalism and outlined the harmful role that private corporate interests had in the aftermath of the Iraq war. I have an ironic eye for spotting what can seem almost paranoid patterns and connections. The principle theme of Metal Gear Solid 4 is PMC (Private Military Companies) who fan the flame of war in order to further their own profits. This is of course not at all an unlikely vision of the future given the use and exponential growth of the PMC in Iraq. The continued undermining of the male in Western culture is still openly debated. What with American parents drugging boys docile with Ritalin. The Fathers for Justice movement in the UK and the speculation of female friendly learning methods in schools (claimed as perhaps responsible for higher female test scores). Legislation and reproductive technology have also undermined men to the point of irrelevance in children’s lives. This is of course a central theme to Fight Club.
There is one major distinction though that marks Fight Club from a different era. Its best encapsulated in one of Tyler many speeches. “We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”
This is the forty year anniversary of 1968. What many have called a momentous year in world politics. From Prague Spring, to the Paris student riots to Northern Irelands civil rights protests. Though debate rages over the various victories and defeats, few doubt the momentousness of the time the Zeitgeist as it where. Recently I have often asked myself well what is my time about? What is my generation fighting for? What is the great narrative at the start of the 21st century? What is our war?
The answer is doubly twofold, trite and arresting simultaneously. Firstly the environment. Whether we humans are raping and polluting the world to the brink of climatological disaster or that the experts are very much mistaken. The second was announced with much greater fanfare when American Airlines flight 11 on the clear blue September morning smashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre. Elevating the temperature of planetary fear towards the feverish remarked Amis, the “world hum” in Delillo’s phrase is “as audible as tinnitus.”
There are many frames to put on it. Terrorism is abstract and meaningless. Moderates Vs Extremists is no better, its attacking a fringe that has no centre and is thus illusory. Islam and the West is more honest but it does not quite capture the ultimate conclusion of 9/11. The start of the 21st century has seen the eruption of the age old battle between reason and religion, faith and dogmatism on one hand and inquiry and tolerance on the other. Modernity and medievalism, progress and regression. There can surely be no doubt that Islam in its current form and practice poses as much of a problem as did National Socialism or Stalinism. The Catholic church has needed countless wars, a enlightenment, a reformation and democracy to see off its most totalitarian aspects. It still of course wields considerable influence. National Socialism took twelve years to see off at the cost of millions of lives. The ending of socialism in Russia took nearly a century in which millions died in death camps and millions more suffered under a oppressive regime.(we may never know the exact amount that perished in the gulag) Islam despite being over a millennia old is still in its “youth of self righteousness” and is diametrically opposed to the West, whether its Christian, Jewish or not.
Palahniuk’s novel and the filmed version is scarily prescient of 9/11 and its implications. 9/11 was an tripartite attack on the economic, military and political foundations of America. The Twin Towers is what most comes to mind when the attack is recalled. The Twin Towers represented symbolically so much of what is American. Modernity, capitalism, wealth, consumerism, power. 9/11 saw the conclusion of a highly disciplined, dogmatic and alienated young men committing an atrocity against America, it attacked its economic centre. The conclusion of Fight Club sees a massive assault planned and executed by highly regimented and disillusioned young men against economic sky scrapers. Specifically (from the film) the credit card companies. The bases of the building are packed with plastic explosives, the demolition of the buildings would ensure economic chaos and anarchy. In other words a societal melt down.
Both groups targets (Mayhems and Al Qaeda) are both principally modern western civilisation. Though capitalism/consumerism is only one such manifestation of the West it is a prime motivating reason for the groups ire. Islam is of course both irredentist and imperialist seeking to impose the Sharia ( a strict and oppressive set of religious laws). The West does not directly threaten Islam. It is its subtle, subversive seductive qualities that undermine its control. We should treasure the brave Ayaan Hirsi Ali who doubted Islam and her Somali oppressors through the reading of Nancy Drew stories. Where little girls unfettered by stifling clothing and sexual prejudice would have adventures along with little boys. When Muslims say that the West threatens their culture or tradition read its threatens our dominance of women and children.
It sounds ridiculous but we may have to face the hilarity of Muslim men marching in protest at the right to beat or veil their wives. Fight Clubs reactionary males are fighting against something less concrete and visceral. Consumerism or modern western society has presented them with a false image of themselves and a way of life that runs contrary to their own interests. The pernicious effect of advertising and marketing is to make people (women as well) feel inadequate and inferior. They allure with the promise of perfection in the buying of “stuff” while at the same time promoting fear and insecurity. “I say fuck being perfect, I say never be complete” opines Tyler
Fight Club starts out as the same suggest in the basement of a bar where men engage in bare knuckle boxing. The feeling of religious ecstasy is palpable. “you never feel alive like you do in Fight Club” “after Fight Club you feel saved” muses the un-named narrator or Jack. Tyler Durden the eccentric alpha male bad boy (played by Brad Pitt) becomes ever more preacher cum philosopher cum messiah. He sets up Project Mayhem, nothing less than a cult. Each individual is stripped of their identity, dressed in a uniform of pure black with shaved heads. They are given their own symbol of identity like all religions, a kiss shaped lye burn on their hands. Mayhem is organised into several committees such as Assault, Arson, Mischief and Misinformation.
Like most ideas or findings or teaching they so often take on a life of their own. “planet Tyler” Mayhem becomes a living breathing super-organism. In a parody of franchises the idea of Fight Club spreads and “Mayhem” literally spreads from city to city. Looking back, Palahniuk’s book would have been better served if it had of presented itself as a sort of user guide to a revolution. A post-modern melange of a book containing diary entries, newspapers reports, doctrinal teachings, interviews with principals over a new cult or religion or movement. The book would be a kind of document from the near future in which Project Mayhem has spun out of control or rather society has.
Given the clear analogy with religion its surprising to not find another clear marker of it-schism. To be fair this happens with almost anything, both Darwin and Nietzsche and Marx gave rise to abominations and perversions. There is hints of this of course. Jack or the unnamed narrator tries to undermine Tyler and stop the “mayhem” from happening. The ending of the book differs slightly from the film which shows that while Jack rids himself of Tyler, the cult of Mayhem lives on independent of a clear central authority.
The chief reason for Tyler and presumably the groups anarchy is nothing more hilarious than a vision of attention seeking fatherless boys acting out. Tyler repeatedly mentions that if your “male, American and Christian your role model for God is your father. Since your father abandoned you, God does not want you in all probability he hates you, you are infectious human waste” Tyler’s solution is not atheism or nihilism but anarchism. He wants God’s attention and presumably his father’s who abandoned him in early childhood. One prominent theme of the book is thus laid bare. “we are a generation of men raised by women” Jack says to Tyler.
Like the Islamists they believe they have everything to lose and nothing to gain from modernity and modern civilisation. We are adapted to the African savannah not the 9-5 open planned office . The influence of JG Ballard is keenly felt in Palahniuk’s imagined scenario of society breakdown. Ballard spent his early childhood among British expatriates in Japanese prison camps in China during the war. His partial biography Empire of the Sun is a fascinating read and goes some way to help the reader understand the writer whom one critic said “was beyond all “psychiatric help”.
His view of society is nothing more than a façade of social convention. Underneath it lies lust, greed, malice and a penchant for destruction. His novels are blueprints for fascism. Modernity is beating men and women into a mind-numbing torpor. In response a cult around “ elective psychopathology” is formed. Violent actions and other cultic behaviour follow. Jacks speech to his boss about stalking the offices with a AR-15 and “pumping round after round into colleague and co-worker” is pure Ballard. The scene in the book expanded in the film where it features a deliberate car crash experienced as a transcendent epiphany is also Ballardian. Ballard’s latest novel (Kingdom Come) is a full on dissection of consumerism and the new cathedral that is the shopping centre. Ballard has been described by some as a visionary, yet he only communicates what is right if front of our very eyes. Nothing is permanent, our idea of social fabric is perilous and subject to change. Many of Ballard’s early work portray what might happen to humans, to society, to consciousness itself if a sweeping natural disaster or simply disaster would ever befall us. In books like the Drowned World the answer is not bright or optimistic. The world is held in place by Hobbes leviathan, by keeping us from each others throats and thereby allowing a semblance of society it suppress our darker, primitive impulses. Books like Fight Club or Super-Cannes or Hi-Rise are thought experiments of a world gone amok.
Annatta or non self is the teaching that the self which most of us subscribe to is a cognitive illusion. Every religion practices the idea that the self be nullified and obliterated. For Christians it is the church, for Muslims it is the Ummah. Buddhists go further and have the cheeky temerity to say that no self exists in the first place. In project Mayhem no one has a name they are “space monkeys”. Fight Club embodies this idea in the schism between Jack and Tyler. They are of course one person. Jack is an insomniac and sufferer of narcolepsy. When he sleeps he becomes Tyler. He some times imagines him and Tyler to be two separate persons hence the book and the films illusion. Tyler is everything Jack wants to be. “I am smart, capable and free in every way that you are not”. By extension Tyler the Id, the super image of Jack’s mind is the fantasy of every man.
The casting of Brad Pitt one of Hollywood’s biggest actors was subversive brilliance. Pitt is naturally glamorous and sexy, a blond haired and blue eyed Aryan. The creation of Tyler in Jack’s head personified by Pitt is nothing more than an extension of the controlling, influencing nature of advertising and consumerism. They peddle in dreams and illusions. Tyler is a dream and a delusion. The most biting ironic moment in the movie is when Tyler played by Pitt offers up the line while showcasing the perfect six pack (which was earlier scorned) “we’re lead to believe we will grow up to be movie gods and rock stars”. The image that ordinary Joe, Edward Norton (Jack) conjures up is Hollywood A list Brad Pitt.
Fight Club belongs to the genre of literature called the unreliable narrator. On the cover of the book is a blurb by Bret Easton Ellis, the author of among others American Psycho. Psycho features perhaps the most unpleasant lead character in all fiction. It too belongs in the genre of the unreliable narrator. It goes further, the outrages that Patrick Bateman “performs” are observed with the same cold distance than characterises Palahniuk’s prose. American Psycho is in part a reaction to the soulless never ending consumption of the 1980’s and the utter amoral nature of American consumerism. Pat Bateman worked on wall street, in the heart of New York’s financial centre. If such a character ever existed he would no doubt of enjoyed the spectacle of 9/11 before consulting Zagats on where best to eat dinner.
The problem with consumerism is that it can never fulfil. Remember what Lao Tzu said “he who knows that enough is enough will always have enough”. It is our attachments to the world, to desire, to materialism, to our ego that cause our suffering. That is the second noble truth of Buddhism. Mayhems philosophy is Zen in nature, its route to the enlightened state though is by vicious “self” destruction. “It is only when you lose everything that your free to do anything” opinions Jack. For Jack fighting and losing his attachment causes him to feel unattached to the situations that would have troubled him previously. “I’m the Zen master, I am enlightened, after Fight Club the sound in you life has the volume turned down, you can deal with anything”. Zen does not advocate violence or anything destructive. It proceeds by introspection and meditation. By peering inward the person sees the truth of impermanence, the truth of the Dharma. Freedom is obtained when one relinquishes the need to control and the desire for sense pleasure or objects. Freedom is obtained when we realise that much of our lives is not under our control but our metal state is. In other words our reaction to it. Our thoughts are thoughts and nothing more than that. Zen operates not by causing a dramatic revolution in the person but rather a subtle disintegration of all the selfish and destructive things that a person performs.
Cultural evolution happens faster than biological evolution. We cannot turn the clock back nor would everyone outside of having adolescent fantasies want to. This is our time, our lives like it or not. This is the only life that we will ever have and we are enormously lucky to have it. Every man is my brother and every woman is my sister. We are bound to each other not only by our DNA but in the awareness that every person is a self with feelings, hopes and dreams. Every person is capable of pain and pleasure and therefore entitled to our moral consideration. We are lucky to live in a time and place where most of the horrors that characterise our past have been overcome. We should resist the temptation to slide into nihilism and we should resist others who wish to lead us into the bonds of suffering and slavery. This means that we should all grow up, participate in our society, negotiate between our needs and the needs of the community. Peter Singer’s book the Expanding Circle sees our moral sense extend from ourselves to our family, to kin and kith, to the village, town, country to the rest of the human species. Project Civilisation rather than project Mayhem.
Tyler’s Mayhem is revolutionary in the spirit of Bolshevism. At the very end of the book one of the “space monkeys” posing as a orderly says to a sectioned Jack “we’re going to break up civilization so we can make something better out of the world”.
We all know what happens when people get these kind of ideas in their head.
Best and be well
Michael Faulkner
Dukkha or unsatisfactoriness or “dis-ease“. Nothing found in the physical world or even the psychological realm can bring lasting deep satisfaction.
Anatta or impersonality, or non-self. Each individual is subject to constant flux, there is no I, no central core or essence.
The three marks of existence (Buddhist teaching)
“Everything is changing, nothing is static, everything is falling apart”
The "teachings" of Tyler Durden.
I decided to reread Chuck Palahniuk first novel Fight Club. I have a habit of looking up books or films and finding out when they were released or printed. I like to know what year it came out in and what I if anything was doing. Fight Club was first printed in 1996 and the film came out in 1999. For a human being a decade is a long time, plenty happens not only to the self but the world itself. Reflection is a curious quality we humans have. Like all other complex living things we have an awareness of night and day and the changing of the seasons. Our ability though to remember the past, infer from it and attach an emotional quality seems unique to our species. I don’t think we’re likely to hear reports from primatologists that haughty old chimps are rueing the day complaining it wasn’t like this in their time.
Us humans view the past with rose tinted lens as it where. Recently I have been taking another trip down memory lane. I decided to replay the magnificent Metal Gear Solid series. A computer game designed over twenty years spanning three Playstation consoles and ten years in its modern guise. The latest in the series features a nearly at deaths door Snake, (the games hero) who must solider on to complete his mission. I remember feeling slightly annoyed at the fact of playing an older Snake. Not because I have anything against old people.(in the legend of heroes, both Wayne and Eastwood have made great, old coffin dodging men of action) no it was that Snake was not my Snake! I was eleven when I first played Metal Gear Solid (1998 PS1) and I will always as it where remember him from that. Throughout the series Snake is never the exact same person twice. Drama insists on having arcs and catharsis. Michael Corleone is not the same person at the start of the Godfather as he is at the end nor is he the same “person” in the second or third Godfather film.
Us humans are a paradox, we don’t like change, yet become depressed by unending regularity. The perennial ring road on Sundays leading to the shopping centre. Calorie counting. Income tax returns. Car wash also on Sundays. We stay in the same job, Same marriage. Watch the same garbage on the TV. Same food. Same sex. Same and samey life until one day the pilot light in your cooker goes off and secretly you 24th floor apartment fills with Gas. Some point in the middle of the night while your flying at fifty thousand feet in the air, your fridge depressor clicks on, igniting a massive explosive and every crummy little bit of your life sails out past the floor to ceiling windows of your filing cabinet condominium flaming into the nights sky. “and they say these things happen” This is the start of the narrator decent from his boring life into the underworld of Fight Club.
Nothing is static, everything is changing, everything is falling apart. The final Metal Gear is filled with this sense of decay. That at once everything is changing and passing away but also as its creator Kojima points out filled with Nietzsche’s eternal return of the same. At one point Snake returning to a former mission site in permafrost Alaska where he hadn’t seen in nine years, glimpses an old surveillance camera. The game flashbacks to the decade before (with old PS1 graphics) the camera then falls and falls apart upon hitting the ground. Snakes old body takes a pummelling during the game, and visibly decays throughout it. “Even the Mona Lisa’s falling apart” writes Palahnuik.
The real paradox is our modern way of life. For roughly a hundred and ninety four or if you differ ninety four thousand years humans were wanders, nomads, hunter gatherers. Every day was a gruelling trial of existence. Men teamed up alongside their fathers, brothers and uncles and went out into the jungle or the savannah or forest and hunted antelope or elk or deer. When not eking out a meagre existence or overcome by gum disease or other unseen and unknown germs and parasites, men would team up and raid other tribes for brides and concubines. Forget football or Smackdown or Playstation this is living, this is what our prefrontal lobes and adrenal glands are for! Life was one long video game of hide and seek and club and be clubbed. Depending on your sex or disposition you might be calling me either an ape in the pejorative sense or ask me where and how do we recreate this primordial society. Recall though Hobbes accurate observation that men’s lives were “nasty, brutish and short” few males lived past their twenties. Still interested?
It is upon this paradox that strode Palahniuk’s book and Fincher’s film. Tossed like a hand grenade into middle America. A brick through the window of politically correct western society. An “assault” upon consumerism and its emasculating and infantilising influence on America men.
I mentioned that the book first appeared twelve years ago and the film nearly a decade ago. Fight Club was always written about as spearheading a Zeitgeist (a spirit of the times). Conjuring up images and feelings of an alienated, isolated, millennial fearing society, namely men. Technologically overwhelmed and divested of power by corporations and consumerism. This is the feeling one gets from Radiohead’s Ok Computer or watching the films of Michael Mann (Heat and the Insider) David Cronenburg’s Crash would be another contribution. TV’s the Sopranos wondered aloud about the state of the American male along with things like family, identity and individualism. In 2000 came Naomi Klein’s excellent No Logo Taking on the Brand Bullies.
As with everything things change, twelve years is a long time. In retrospection it’s the same as looking back from 1999 to 1987. The cold war was still ongoing, in my own country of Northern Ireland the troubles were still ongoing. South African apartheid was still ongoing. The music scene always touted as representing the times had the burgeoning rave culture. Computer games were still simplistic and 2D. Much the same in way of differences can be said of 1979 to 1968 or the affluence in Britain during the fifties compared with the harshness of the war years. Most people know that Britain was rationed (milk, eggs, meat, sugar were all on set limits) but this rationing continued even after the war finished.
Films and cultural products when viewed outside of their era can be seen as nothing more than a curiosity or a oddity. Jean Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960, France) would elicit bemused facial expressions of the young today. As would Hard Days Night (1964 UK) the film a surreal fantasy of the adventures of the pop band know as The Beatles. When me and my friend watched Easy Rider (1969 US) after the first five minutes we were like “what the hell is this?!)
We would naturally expect Fight Club to be no different. Perhaps I will display naivety when I say that nothing much as changed. Consumerism and its adverse effects are still ever present. The malignance of corporations is still present. Naomi Klein’s last book was on disaster capitalism and outlined the harmful role that private corporate interests had in the aftermath of the Iraq war. I have an ironic eye for spotting what can seem almost paranoid patterns and connections. The principle theme of Metal Gear Solid 4 is PMC (Private Military Companies) who fan the flame of war in order to further their own profits. This is of course not at all an unlikely vision of the future given the use and exponential growth of the PMC in Iraq. The continued undermining of the male in Western culture is still openly debated. What with American parents drugging boys docile with Ritalin. The Fathers for Justice movement in the UK and the speculation of female friendly learning methods in schools (claimed as perhaps responsible for higher female test scores). Legislation and reproductive technology have also undermined men to the point of irrelevance in children’s lives. This is of course a central theme to Fight Club.
There is one major distinction though that marks Fight Club from a different era. Its best encapsulated in one of Tyler many speeches. “We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”
This is the forty year anniversary of 1968. What many have called a momentous year in world politics. From Prague Spring, to the Paris student riots to Northern Irelands civil rights protests. Though debate rages over the various victories and defeats, few doubt the momentousness of the time the Zeitgeist as it where. Recently I have often asked myself well what is my time about? What is my generation fighting for? What is the great narrative at the start of the 21st century? What is our war?
The answer is doubly twofold, trite and arresting simultaneously. Firstly the environment. Whether we humans are raping and polluting the world to the brink of climatological disaster or that the experts are very much mistaken. The second was announced with much greater fanfare when American Airlines flight 11 on the clear blue September morning smashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre. Elevating the temperature of planetary fear towards the feverish remarked Amis, the “world hum” in Delillo’s phrase is “as audible as tinnitus.”
There are many frames to put on it. Terrorism is abstract and meaningless. Moderates Vs Extremists is no better, its attacking a fringe that has no centre and is thus illusory. Islam and the West is more honest but it does not quite capture the ultimate conclusion of 9/11. The start of the 21st century has seen the eruption of the age old battle between reason and religion, faith and dogmatism on one hand and inquiry and tolerance on the other. Modernity and medievalism, progress and regression. There can surely be no doubt that Islam in its current form and practice poses as much of a problem as did National Socialism or Stalinism. The Catholic church has needed countless wars, a enlightenment, a reformation and democracy to see off its most totalitarian aspects. It still of course wields considerable influence. National Socialism took twelve years to see off at the cost of millions of lives. The ending of socialism in Russia took nearly a century in which millions died in death camps and millions more suffered under a oppressive regime.(we may never know the exact amount that perished in the gulag) Islam despite being over a millennia old is still in its “youth of self righteousness” and is diametrically opposed to the West, whether its Christian, Jewish or not.
Palahniuk’s novel and the filmed version is scarily prescient of 9/11 and its implications. 9/11 was an tripartite attack on the economic, military and political foundations of America. The Twin Towers is what most comes to mind when the attack is recalled. The Twin Towers represented symbolically so much of what is American. Modernity, capitalism, wealth, consumerism, power. 9/11 saw the conclusion of a highly disciplined, dogmatic and alienated young men committing an atrocity against America, it attacked its economic centre. The conclusion of Fight Club sees a massive assault planned and executed by highly regimented and disillusioned young men against economic sky scrapers. Specifically (from the film) the credit card companies. The bases of the building are packed with plastic explosives, the demolition of the buildings would ensure economic chaos and anarchy. In other words a societal melt down.
Both groups targets (Mayhems and Al Qaeda) are both principally modern western civilisation. Though capitalism/consumerism is only one such manifestation of the West it is a prime motivating reason for the groups ire. Islam is of course both irredentist and imperialist seeking to impose the Sharia ( a strict and oppressive set of religious laws). The West does not directly threaten Islam. It is its subtle, subversive seductive qualities that undermine its control. We should treasure the brave Ayaan Hirsi Ali who doubted Islam and her Somali oppressors through the reading of Nancy Drew stories. Where little girls unfettered by stifling clothing and sexual prejudice would have adventures along with little boys. When Muslims say that the West threatens their culture or tradition read its threatens our dominance of women and children.
It sounds ridiculous but we may have to face the hilarity of Muslim men marching in protest at the right to beat or veil their wives. Fight Clubs reactionary males are fighting against something less concrete and visceral. Consumerism or modern western society has presented them with a false image of themselves and a way of life that runs contrary to their own interests. The pernicious effect of advertising and marketing is to make people (women as well) feel inadequate and inferior. They allure with the promise of perfection in the buying of “stuff” while at the same time promoting fear and insecurity. “I say fuck being perfect, I say never be complete” opines Tyler
Fight Club starts out as the same suggest in the basement of a bar where men engage in bare knuckle boxing. The feeling of religious ecstasy is palpable. “you never feel alive like you do in Fight Club” “after Fight Club you feel saved” muses the un-named narrator or Jack. Tyler Durden the eccentric alpha male bad boy (played by Brad Pitt) becomes ever more preacher cum philosopher cum messiah. He sets up Project Mayhem, nothing less than a cult. Each individual is stripped of their identity, dressed in a uniform of pure black with shaved heads. They are given their own symbol of identity like all religions, a kiss shaped lye burn on their hands. Mayhem is organised into several committees such as Assault, Arson, Mischief and Misinformation.
Like most ideas or findings or teaching they so often take on a life of their own. “planet Tyler” Mayhem becomes a living breathing super-organism. In a parody of franchises the idea of Fight Club spreads and “Mayhem” literally spreads from city to city. Looking back, Palahniuk’s book would have been better served if it had of presented itself as a sort of user guide to a revolution. A post-modern melange of a book containing diary entries, newspapers reports, doctrinal teachings, interviews with principals over a new cult or religion or movement. The book would be a kind of document from the near future in which Project Mayhem has spun out of control or rather society has.
Given the clear analogy with religion its surprising to not find another clear marker of it-schism. To be fair this happens with almost anything, both Darwin and Nietzsche and Marx gave rise to abominations and perversions. There is hints of this of course. Jack or the unnamed narrator tries to undermine Tyler and stop the “mayhem” from happening. The ending of the book differs slightly from the film which shows that while Jack rids himself of Tyler, the cult of Mayhem lives on independent of a clear central authority.
The chief reason for Tyler and presumably the groups anarchy is nothing more hilarious than a vision of attention seeking fatherless boys acting out. Tyler repeatedly mentions that if your “male, American and Christian your role model for God is your father. Since your father abandoned you, God does not want you in all probability he hates you, you are infectious human waste” Tyler’s solution is not atheism or nihilism but anarchism. He wants God’s attention and presumably his father’s who abandoned him in early childhood. One prominent theme of the book is thus laid bare. “we are a generation of men raised by women” Jack says to Tyler.
Like the Islamists they believe they have everything to lose and nothing to gain from modernity and modern civilisation. We are adapted to the African savannah not the 9-5 open planned office . The influence of JG Ballard is keenly felt in Palahniuk’s imagined scenario of society breakdown. Ballard spent his early childhood among British expatriates in Japanese prison camps in China during the war. His partial biography Empire of the Sun is a fascinating read and goes some way to help the reader understand the writer whom one critic said “was beyond all “psychiatric help”.
His view of society is nothing more than a façade of social convention. Underneath it lies lust, greed, malice and a penchant for destruction. His novels are blueprints for fascism. Modernity is beating men and women into a mind-numbing torpor. In response a cult around “ elective psychopathology” is formed. Violent actions and other cultic behaviour follow. Jacks speech to his boss about stalking the offices with a AR-15 and “pumping round after round into colleague and co-worker” is pure Ballard. The scene in the book expanded in the film where it features a deliberate car crash experienced as a transcendent epiphany is also Ballardian. Ballard’s latest novel (Kingdom Come) is a full on dissection of consumerism and the new cathedral that is the shopping centre. Ballard has been described by some as a visionary, yet he only communicates what is right if front of our very eyes. Nothing is permanent, our idea of social fabric is perilous and subject to change. Many of Ballard’s early work portray what might happen to humans, to society, to consciousness itself if a sweeping natural disaster or simply disaster would ever befall us. In books like the Drowned World the answer is not bright or optimistic. The world is held in place by Hobbes leviathan, by keeping us from each others throats and thereby allowing a semblance of society it suppress our darker, primitive impulses. Books like Fight Club or Super-Cannes or Hi-Rise are thought experiments of a world gone amok.
Annatta or non self is the teaching that the self which most of us subscribe to is a cognitive illusion. Every religion practices the idea that the self be nullified and obliterated. For Christians it is the church, for Muslims it is the Ummah. Buddhists go further and have the cheeky temerity to say that no self exists in the first place. In project Mayhem no one has a name they are “space monkeys”. Fight Club embodies this idea in the schism between Jack and Tyler. They are of course one person. Jack is an insomniac and sufferer of narcolepsy. When he sleeps he becomes Tyler. He some times imagines him and Tyler to be two separate persons hence the book and the films illusion. Tyler is everything Jack wants to be. “I am smart, capable and free in every way that you are not”. By extension Tyler the Id, the super image of Jack’s mind is the fantasy of every man.
The casting of Brad Pitt one of Hollywood’s biggest actors was subversive brilliance. Pitt is naturally glamorous and sexy, a blond haired and blue eyed Aryan. The creation of Tyler in Jack’s head personified by Pitt is nothing more than an extension of the controlling, influencing nature of advertising and consumerism. They peddle in dreams and illusions. Tyler is a dream and a delusion. The most biting ironic moment in the movie is when Tyler played by Pitt offers up the line while showcasing the perfect six pack (which was earlier scorned) “we’re lead to believe we will grow up to be movie gods and rock stars”. The image that ordinary Joe, Edward Norton (Jack) conjures up is Hollywood A list Brad Pitt.
Fight Club belongs to the genre of literature called the unreliable narrator. On the cover of the book is a blurb by Bret Easton Ellis, the author of among others American Psycho. Psycho features perhaps the most unpleasant lead character in all fiction. It too belongs in the genre of the unreliable narrator. It goes further, the outrages that Patrick Bateman “performs” are observed with the same cold distance than characterises Palahniuk’s prose. American Psycho is in part a reaction to the soulless never ending consumption of the 1980’s and the utter amoral nature of American consumerism. Pat Bateman worked on wall street, in the heart of New York’s financial centre. If such a character ever existed he would no doubt of enjoyed the spectacle of 9/11 before consulting Zagats on where best to eat dinner.
The problem with consumerism is that it can never fulfil. Remember what Lao Tzu said “he who knows that enough is enough will always have enough”. It is our attachments to the world, to desire, to materialism, to our ego that cause our suffering. That is the second noble truth of Buddhism. Mayhems philosophy is Zen in nature, its route to the enlightened state though is by vicious “self” destruction. “It is only when you lose everything that your free to do anything” opinions Jack. For Jack fighting and losing his attachment causes him to feel unattached to the situations that would have troubled him previously. “I’m the Zen master, I am enlightened, after Fight Club the sound in you life has the volume turned down, you can deal with anything”. Zen does not advocate violence or anything destructive. It proceeds by introspection and meditation. By peering inward the person sees the truth of impermanence, the truth of the Dharma. Freedom is obtained when one relinquishes the need to control and the desire for sense pleasure or objects. Freedom is obtained when we realise that much of our lives is not under our control but our metal state is. In other words our reaction to it. Our thoughts are thoughts and nothing more than that. Zen operates not by causing a dramatic revolution in the person but rather a subtle disintegration of all the selfish and destructive things that a person performs.
Cultural evolution happens faster than biological evolution. We cannot turn the clock back nor would everyone outside of having adolescent fantasies want to. This is our time, our lives like it or not. This is the only life that we will ever have and we are enormously lucky to have it. Every man is my brother and every woman is my sister. We are bound to each other not only by our DNA but in the awareness that every person is a self with feelings, hopes and dreams. Every person is capable of pain and pleasure and therefore entitled to our moral consideration. We are lucky to live in a time and place where most of the horrors that characterise our past have been overcome. We should resist the temptation to slide into nihilism and we should resist others who wish to lead us into the bonds of suffering and slavery. This means that we should all grow up, participate in our society, negotiate between our needs and the needs of the community. Peter Singer’s book the Expanding Circle sees our moral sense extend from ourselves to our family, to kin and kith, to the village, town, country to the rest of the human species. Project Civilisation rather than project Mayhem.
Tyler’s Mayhem is revolutionary in the spirit of Bolshevism. At the very end of the book one of the “space monkeys” posing as a orderly says to a sectioned Jack “we’re going to break up civilization so we can make something better out of the world”.
We all know what happens when people get these kind of ideas in their head.
Best and be well
Michael Faulkner
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)